By Dr Sarah Pickup, Senior Lecturer in Health, Safety and Wellbeing

COVID-19 will ultimately have affected some employees directly or their close friends and family. To make matters worse we have nothing to compare these current times against. The last comparable event would be the Spanish flu in 1918, though I think it’s safe to say that the way we live our lives has significantly changed and the current pandemic is a whole new Pandora’s box.. and it’s wide open! To say these are uncertain and anxious times is an understatement.

Throughout the UK individuals are facing uncertainty, change, fear and anxiety, not least for the health, safety and wellbeing of those operating as frontline essential key workers and for the financial implications of the self-employed, small and large businesses alike.

One might think that those who are ‘lucky’ enough to work from home have fewer concerns, other than the impact of isolation that social distancing generates. Indeed, the internet is now awash with a plethora of guidance and tips for homeworkers to stay sane during these times of confinement.

Though I can’t help feeling the onus is once again placed on individual workers to develop and utilise adaptive coping strategies to maintain their own positive mental health during these turbulent times.

Worker wellbeing in the UK was problematic before the pandemic…

Let’s remind ourselves that mental health is a ‘product’ of many interconnected components derived from the workplace, the interface between work and home, our own personalities, dispositions and experiences, our socioeconomic position and much much more. We can refer to these as strains, pressures or psychosocial hazards. The degree to which they become a problem or a risk is dependent in many cases on the availability of internal and external resources.

Without question we have to take control over our own wellbeing. Indeed, there are occasions where we need to seek some external support to help us cope with some of the pressures that life throws our way and prevent them from becoming problematic to our mental health.  Since we spend a significant proportion of our time at work, employers therefore have a pivotal role to play here.

The problem however, is that before the pandemic, organisations were generally not so hot on managing the health and wellbeing of employees. One might go as far as to say that health and wellbeing issues have been rising to almost pandemic levels.  Rising levels of stress, depression and anxiety across UK workplaces is not a new phenomenon and has consistently been the second most citied reason for worker absence until 2018/19 when it finally ‘took the top spot’. Over half a million workers in the UK are reported to have new or long-standing cases of stress, anxiety and depression and while this is the leading cause of absences it does not account for those who continue to go to work and suffer, known as presenteeism – the problem therefore is likely to be much much worse!

If we have known about the rising levels of worker mental ill health, why then are the statistics still rising?

First, organisations appear to implement wellbeing strategies inconsistently. In the annual Health and Wellbeing At Work Report published by The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD, 2020) it was found that only half of the 1,078 organisations across the UK had wellbeing strategies in place, through the majority of these organisations were unable to report on their effectiveness.

Second, we are seeing a huge rise in the implementation of mental health awareness programmes, mental health first aiders, resilience and mindful training as well as health promotion activities such as smoking cessation programmes. While these are undoubtedly useful and will have health benefits to some degree, they do scream ‘here is what you can do for yourself’. In fact, these types of interventions are what we would call secondary interventions. Their purpose should be to mitigate and alleviate any residual wellbeing risks that could not be eliminated or controlled at source. In reality, the CIPD report indicated that less than half the organisations surveyed conducted any form of wellbeing risk identification via a stress risk assessment for example.

Now add a worldwide pandemic to the mix.

Guess what? The wellbeing risks that are present but remain generally unidentified and unmanaged before the pandemic are still present, though now emerge with some new and unique challenges. Take work demands for example…

Both the CIPD and the Health and Safety Executive annual statistics for 2018/19 identify work demands and workload as the leading cause of poor wellbeing at work. This has been attributed to unrealistic work demands, including high workloads, time pressures and interruptions.

Given the aforementioned statistics and wellbeing landscape of the past decade it is not a leap to suggest that with increasing numbers of employees now switching to more remote, home working arrangements in an effort to contribute positively to social distancing, that the pressure of work demands would remain unchanged. Now however there is the addition of an increased reliance on technology.

Converting work to more online formats and ensuring effective communications means using technology in new and innovate ways. While for many this is an exciting challenge and an opportunity, for others this is likely to be a significant burden and adding to what may already be demanding workloads, thus introduces a new wellbeing hazard, technostress, referring to the negative psychological impact that technology can have on some employees.

The range and complexity of technology is one source of technostress, though in addition, research has also found that as the requirement to use technology increases so has the potential to unveil hidden vulnerabilities of workers around the efficacy with which they can use and adapt to technology. This has led to reports of higher levels of job insecurity and job status insecurity, fearing a loss of credibility or status creating additional fear and anxiety.

While complexity, and insecurity are significant predictors of technostress it’s impact on home life cannot be underestimated. Work/family conflict is a known predictor of poor workplace wellbeing and technology certainly exacerbates the situation. Already we have seen how being available outside working hours and having constant access to work communications blurs the line between work and home but now with home working in place for the foreseeable future, that line becomes even more unclear. As employees battle multiple demands from work, childcare, homeschooling and regular domestic activities, this can only aggravate the situation.

Much of the focus on worker wellbeing during our transition through the health pandemic has been on the impact that social isolation will have on our mental health, and quite rightly so.

As social beings the social distancing and isolation forced upon on us is most unnatural. Not only does the structure of work aid our mental health but it is the social relationships it provides that is so important.

Having said that, social relationships within the workplace can be a further wellbeing hazard, with issues such mistrust within a work environment and the emotional demands of certain job activities that can increase the risk of these becoming problematic to wellbeing.

Trust has never been so important as individuals are asked to work more remotely, yet research has highlighted the pervasive nature of mistrust both among colleagues (horizontal trust) but also vertically between employees and management, particularly within unhealthy or poor organisational cultures. Employees within such work environments have reported; not being trusted to do the work without supervision, information being withheld and a general mistrust in management intentions. Again, add a pandemic to the mix and the remote methods of working, the anxiety that mistrust can generate is significantly amplified. The risks to employee wellbeing become more likely and more severe if not managed effectively.

Of course, the social aspect of work is not limited to colleagues and management alike. For many employees their roles are front-facing and as such raise new risks to wellbeing. For many, being front-facing brings with it more emotional demands, that is, being in emotionally demanding situations or having to relate to other people’s problems. Dealing with these face-to-face is challenging enough and one might think current working arrangements are an opportunity to put some distance between the self and what can be a pervasive source of workplace stress.

For those who are still expected to manage these frontline activities and relationships in a remote way of working, new risks emerge. Those seeking out the services that frontline employees provide are most likely suffering very similar impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, the uncertainty, fear and anxiety. Individual differences aside, generally, our subconscious takes note of the behaviour of others and we modulate our own behaviour to be more socially acceptable. But, what about when people are now forced to communicate much more indirectly via the phone or via electronic communications? Those social cues are no longer readily available. Social media is awash with examples of how individuals can become impulsive and more socially disinhibited leading to more maladaptive behaviours that are directed at employees.

There are many more psychosocial hazards in the workplace that has the potential to influence the wellbeing of employees, and the current situation brings with it new variations that if not identified, assessed and mitigated in a meaningful and sustainable way, they remain significant risks to employee mental health.

What can employers do?

A good place to start is the Health and Safety Executives (HSE) six stress management standards which should be applied to the current working contexts that employees are facing themselves in. These standards are written with comprehensive practical guidance to support assessment and interventions.

As we come out of this pandemic, organisations should be considering more longer-term plans including more comprehensive, consistent and strategic approaches the management of workplace wellbeing. An organisational wellbeing policy that sets out initial aims and objectives that includes a commitment to the identification of primary wellbeing hazards and the assessment of risks would provide organisations with an evidence base from which to develop short, medium and longer-term interventions tailored to their own specific needs.

Secondary interventions should be identified to compliment the residual wellbeing risks that could not be completely eliminated at source. These can include heath promotion strategies aimed at addressing specific health needs of an organisation and their employees   Followed by more tertiary level initiatives such as effective and appropriate employee assistance programmes (EAPs), access to physiotherapists or counselling as required.

The key message…

While it is important for employees to take control over their own health and wellbeing, employers have statutory responsibilities to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of their employees also. More needs to be done to address wellbeing hazards and their risks at source before defaulting to more secondary initiatives that places the onus on individuals.